Polls suggest Cruz momentum as runoff nears

Published 7:56 pm, Friday, July 13, 2012

The clouds hovering over much of Texas this week could be a statewide portent for the better known of the two Houstonians vying to replace Republican U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. For the first time in their long campaign slog, independent polls are showing the so-called movement candidate, tea party favorite Ted Cruz, leading the GOP establishment favorite, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst.

Polls also suggest that Cruz is not the only insurgent candidate on the move as the days dwindle toward the July 31 runoff. In San Antonio, for example, tea party favorite Donna Campbell, a New Braunfels physician, is threatening to derail the long legislative career of state Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio. In that race and other GOP runoff races around the state, enthusiasm and turnout are key.

"If less than a million people vote and Cruz wins, he's likely to have coattails," said Mustafa Tameez, a Houston political consultant. "He'll pull in a lot of the movement candidates."

Cruz has insisted all along that his supporters have the enthusiasm, and a new survey suggests that he may be right. The survey, by Wenzel Strategies, shows Cruz leading Dewhurst 47 percent to 38 percent with two weeks to go. Dewhurst won the first round of voting by 10 points but did not get the 50 percent required to avoid a runoff.

The Columbus, Ohio-based Wenzel Strategies is the Republican pollster that projected the tea party-fueled defeat of longtime Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar this year.

"Ted Cruz clearly has the momentum in this pivotal race, because he believes deeply in the core conservative principles that Texans live by," said Citizens United President David Bossie.

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Dewhurst, 66, the longtime lieutenant governor who announced his candidacy before most voters had ever heard of Cruz, a former Texas solicitor general, also released a poll this week, one that contradicted the Citizen's United survey. The Dewhurst poll, conducted by Gov. Rick Perry's polling firm, Baselice & Associates, showed the lieutenant governor leading 50 percent to 42 percent.

SMU political scientist Cal Jillson said he still is predicting a Dewhurst win, but he and other analysts agree that Dewhurst is in trouble.

"I am not convinced by the polls of the last couple days," he said. "The Cruz people are praying for low turnout, hoping to win one to nothing if Dewhurst forgets to vote. I still think Dewhurst wins by six, but I have been surprised before."

Dewhurst's most prominent supporter is Perry, who has tea party bona fides himself, but he and the candidate are the state's best-known establishment politicians, a potential liability this year.

Cruz, 41, who touts endorsements by Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum, Sean Hannity and other nationally known movement favorites, released an internal poll last week that had him leading Dewhurst by 9 points, 49 to 40 percent.

Although most political analysts are skeptical of internal polls, another poll by the independent Public Personality Polling, has Cruz leading 49 percent to 44 percent.

"This race is one of the most stark examples of the tea party movement propelling a candidate that we've seen to date," said PPP polling director Tom Jensen.

The winner of the GOP runoff will face the winner of a Democratic runoff between retired educator Grady Yarbrough, of San Antonio, a perennial also-ran in primaries for both parties, and Paul Sadler, a former state representative from Henderson, who is little known statewide.

Enthusiasm metrics

Perhaps more significant than the Cruz-Dewhurst horse-race numbers are the enthusiasm metrics. The PPP poll finds Cruz leading by a 59-36 margin among voters who describe themselves as "very excited" about voting in the runoff. Dewhurst leads 51-43 among the "somewhat excited" and 50-36 among those who say they are "not that excited."

Cruz is banking on the tea party, whose members give him a 71-26 advantage and who are expected to make up 40 percent of runoff voters. As Cruz notes regularly, the runoff is all about turnout.

"Clearly, the intensity and enthusiasm of Cruz supporters will impact other down-ballot runoffs," said Houston political analyst Robert Miller. "In general, the candidate that is perceived to be more conservative will have an advantage in this low turnout/high tea party enthusiasm environment. This will be a very difficult environment for Senator Wentworth to win in, for example."

In addition to Wentworth/Campbell, consultant Tameez points to the 36th Congressional District race, where Mike Jackson, a relatively well-known state senator from Lake Jackson, finished third to political neophyte Stephen Takach, a Baytown financial adviser, and Steve Stockman, a former congressman who during his one term in office took positions that could best be described as eccentric.

In the GOP runoff for the 25th Congressional District, which stretches from Tarrant County to the Austin area, Wes Riddle, a retired Army officer, is hoping tea party energy and a Ron Paul endorsement will propel him past Roger Williams, former Texas secretary of state. Williams led by 10 points in the primary.

Difficult to poll

As Tameez notes, the individual fates of Riddle, Campbell and other movement candidates are tied to Cruz, but the insurgent has not won yet.

"Runoff elections are notoriously difficult to poll, so Dewhurst shouldn't be written off," Jensen said. "But the fact that Cruz is ahead overall and up by even more with the folks most likely to vote is a pretty bad sign for his prospects."

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